Suppose you are preparing to marry your soul mate, only to belatedly realize that this person is not truly yours alone? That may be because your mate’s soul is already intricately intertwined with others: a twin, triplets, perhaps a group of quadruplets. This quote is the opening paragraph of a New York Times article that appeared in the titled Wed Once, but Seeing Triple: Marrying a Twin (and Her Sister) by Alyson Krueger. Krueger writes about the sadness and confusion […]
Category Archives: Conflict
My Twin Journey Poem
Katie is an identical twin who has just graduated from the University of Gloucestershire in Gloucestershire, England. Her dissertation is entitled “My Twinship Journey: A Study that Explores How My Twin Sister and I Use Our Language to Express Our Identities in Relation to the Membership Category of Twinship.” Her research highlights their ongoing differentiation as both sisters confront and work through issues of identity and separateness. Katie describes how language choice and speech intonations recorded in separate interviews with […]
FOMO
I had no idea what my children meant when I heard them saying that their friend suffered from FOMO. They explained the definition of the acronym as “Fear of Missing Out.” This anxiety about missing out on something popped into my head after I listened to a mother of six-year-old twins equivocate about her decision to send only one of her daughters to a ballet class. The daughter who had expressed an interest in taking ballet told her mom that […]
Sizing Up the Competition
Competition among siblings is integral to most families. Our natural instinct is to survive and thrive. Many twin pairs, however, have a different experience with sibling rivalry and competitiveness because of their intimate relationship. While twins fight just as much—or possibly more—than nontwin siblings, their feelings about surpassing or outdoing their twin can be conflicting and confusing. More often than not, identical twins that compete in the same sport are wholly supportive of and noncompetitive with their sibling. Often they […]
What’s a Mother-in-Law to Do?
I was recently attending the birthday celebration of a friend of mine who turned 85 years old. She is a vital, energetic, engaged woman who is a terrific role model for aging gracefully and graciously. This friend has developed a fascination about twins ever since we met about ten years ago. I call her the Twin Magnet because she seems to find and meet twins wherever she goes. In addition to the twins themselves, she has introduced me and my […]